As a newlywed, my mother not only took in boarders, but also did their weekly laundry and ironed their work shirts. For this reason, as long as I can remember, her Tuesday mantra was: “When I die, I’m going straight to Hell where the Devil will hand me an iron, and that’s how I’ll spend eternity.”

       Thus, at ten years of age, I received an imaginary diploma and was involuntarily drafted into the Ironing Board Brigade.  By the time I was a teenager, I could professionally steam iron my plaid, pleated-all-around wool skirts, which were de rigueur at the time.  Pillow cases, sheets–even linen tea towels did not escape my dedicated pressing.

       As I recall, no money changed hands, but I was given three wholesome meals a day, had a warm bed to sleep in, watched Gene Autry at the Saturday matinee each week, and as I marched out the door to school, I was fortunate (so I was told,) to have a tablespoon of cod liver oil drizzled down my throat to protect me from every sickness bestowed upon mankind. My fishy breath preceded me into every classroom and trailed me back home each afternoon.

       By the time I married, my trusty Sunbeam was practically an extension of my left hand. The ironing board had a permanent place of honor under a window in the basement. On winter days, I would tote the frozen sheets from the clothesline–so solid they were unable to ’flap’, carry them down the steps to the basement, and as they hit the warm air, I had to sidestep the now crumpled percale. The sheets were pressed and folded, followed by pillowcases, tea towels, my husband’s dress shirts, and underwear, the children’s pants, skirts, dresses, blouses, and my slacks, and shirts. Even the delicate, but wrinkled lace on my young daughter’s socks was lovingly ruffled.

       That was over fifty years ago.  I live alone now.  However, little has changed other than the quantity of material involved, and occasionally I fudge, pressing only the border of the sheet which will get folded over the blanket.  God forbid, someone should discover a possible infraction of the dictates of the Smoothing Out Society.

       The other day, I received a call from an old friend. We chatted for a while and then I begged off by telling her that I had to get back to my ironing. On the other end of the line, I heard this raucous guffaw followed by these earth-shattering words: “Jan, I can’t believe you–I haven’t ironed in YEARS!”

       My friend and I had attended college together in the early 50’s, and to tell you the truth, she wasn’t the brightest bulb lighting up the cafeteria. In fact, after ’rush’ week, she failed to make her grades and wasn’t able to ’pledge’ a sorority. That’s when I knew I must be smarter than she, for at least I had the foresight to entreat three of my professors into changing their grades which enabled me to pledge.

       I lost contact with Patsy for countless years. When we renewed our friendship in 2001, I found that some people like myself obtained a sorority pin, while others gained an intellect.  Eventually, Patsy had gone back to college, graduated, received her Masters, and earned her Doctorate. She taught at the college level until she retired.

       After I hung up the phone, I thought to myself–WHOA!  If brilliant Patsy doesn’t iron, perhaps I’ve been wasting valuable time. I unplugged the expectant  iron, shoved the board into the back of a closet, hung up all the unpressed garments, and was immediately engulfed in the euphoria of my new-found emancipation!

       Having acquired a bountiful amount of free time, I pondered how I would spend it. Over the next few days, I mated all my socks, wiped the year’s worth of crumbs from the silverware drawers, took everything out from under the kitchen sink and proceeded to throw away ten rusty SOS pads, an empty bottle of ammonia; disposed of too-many-to-count cans of air freshener which no longer sprayed; tossed two boxes of dishwasher detergent whose solidified granules attested to the fact that rigor mortis had set in in the ’90’s, and pitched four cans of Drano, dated 2001, ’03, ’05 and ’07.  Not  one had ever been pried open.

       Now that the condo was in tip-top shape, my next venture was to tackle The Bucket List. You might say my life is pretty pathetic, for at first glance, number one on the list was:

       1. Work the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle

       For years, I have worked the Crossword Puzzle from the Naples Daily News. I wait until the paper arrives at 5:30 am and immediately tear open the Neapolitan section, pull out the sheet with the puzzle, warm up the coffee, sharpen the pencil, ruminating that one of these days, I really should work it in ink.

       I have even been known to time myself  to see how swiftly it can be solved.  Anything under five minutes and I take a red pen and scrawl ‘100%’ at the top of the paper. (Told you my life is pathetic!)

       Anyone who has ever worked the Naples Daily News Crossword realizes that you can be one card shy of a deck of 52 and still complete it in a short period of time.. Some typical questions from yesterday’s paper:

                          1. Koch, Asner, Kennedy.        Answ:  Eds

                          2. —– min. in an hr.                 Answ:  Sixty

                          3. Pink, long-legged birds.       Answ:  Flamingos

       After church this morning, I drove to the Publix and purchased the Sunday New York Times. With wild anticipation, I raced at breakneck speed back to my building, quickly parked and sprinted to the elevator. Each floor seemed an eternity. Entering my unit, I hastily popped the cup of stale coffee in the microwave, sharpened a pencil, pulled out the Crossword and sat down, reflecting on the possibility of applying to Mensa.

       Three hours later, the 365 wee white squares were still pristine, the pointy end of the pencil was still pointy, my coffee was cold, and I was dejected, disheartened, dispirited, deflated.

       Muttering “to hell with it,”  I marched to the closet and once again dragged out the ironing board.

                                                                                                       Jan Chapman

                                                                                                       January, 2013

      Evie Grossman is known for her beef brisket. She is a party planner, she is picky, picky picky–bordering on anal! An invitation to one of her dinner parties is a coveted event, and this night would be no exception, for we had been informed beforehand that she was serving her Famous Beef Brisket.

      Forty guests had been invited to celebrate Evie’s husband Marvin’s newly acquired status as a retired podiatrist, and to bid farewell to all of us who spend our winters in the sunny south.

     The evening was warm and sultry. The women were decked out in upscale cruise wear, while their husbands were dressed in casual golf attire, as most had come directly from their eighteen holes of Saturday golf.

     Some guests arrived early while others straggled in, but thirty-nine had assembled by 7:00, having entered through the front door, down the hall to the kitchen, on to the sun room and out the back door to the patio. Seventy-eight dirty shoes trudged through their entire home.

     A bar had been set up on the spacious patio, chock-full with wine, beer, booze and soft drinks. Long tables festooned in bright colors were set with the usual fancy hors ‘d oeuvres: warm dips composed with exotic ingredients, home made finger foods, cheeses, crackers, spreads, and bowls of ice crowned atop with gigantic shrimp.

     The party was in full swing. Jimmie Buffet was blaring to his Parrot Heads thru the speakers, the alcohol was flowing, the women were air-kissing and gossiping, and the husbands were replaying their eighteen holes of golf–hole by boring hole, and settling up their debts.

     I just happened to be near the back door when it suddenly opened and I heard Evie’s voice beckon me in hushed, but frantic tones from the darkened interior–”Jan–get in here, bring Helen and Carol and lock the door behind you.”

     We three entered the door to the sunroom. There was Evie–sauce and brisket cascading down the entire length of her body. Further on, in the kitchen, brisket was dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls, onto the countertops and puddling on the inlaid wooden floor.

     As Monk, the famous television sleuth, would say, “Here’s what happened:”  To keep her kitchen spotless and to avoid unnecessary clean-up, Evie did something she’d never done before. She decided to cook her brisket in a disposable aluminum pan recently purchased from Costco for the occasion. The twenty pounds of sliced brisket was more than the flimsy pan could endure, and when she removed it from the oven, the pan imploded upon itself, exploded onto the floor and then erupted like Vesuvius over Evie and the entire kitchen.

     Being a Jewish American Princess isn’t Evie’s only claim to royalty: she is also the Queen of the F-bomb! “Jesus God almighty– what the bleep am I going to do? I have forty bleeping people waiting to be served the bleeping brisket and it’s all over my bleeping floor. I am So bleeped!” (bleeping/sobbing/bleeping/sobbing/bleeping/sobbing.)

     Silly volunteer that I am, I immediately took control–ordered her to take a shower and show me where she kept her spatulas and dish rags.  Carol, Helen and I scooped pounds of brisket from her floor into proper baking dishes, soaked up all the sauce we could muster with dish rags, then squeezed the liquid mess over the briskets.

     We took soap and water to her upholstered furniture, scrubbed the walls, the counter tops, the cabinetry and her computer. Sue arrived late, became aware of what was occurring, found a wet mop and began swabbing the juicy floor, which we had all been slipping and sliding on.

     Evie reappeared, freshly showered and dressed and swore us all to bleeping secrecy. This was not the first time we had been instructed to keep our secrets “in the vault”, but those are stories for another day.

     Dinner was only fifty minutes late. By this time, all the guests were too well-oiled to notice, and hungry enough to wolf down Evie’s noodle koogle, rice casseroles, mounds of assorted salads, warm rolls, platters of sliced tomatoes with fresh basil, buffalo mozzarella, twelve- year aged Balsamic vinegar, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, and her now (in)Famous Beef Brisket!

     Truth be told, all forty (well, actually, thirty-five, for Evie, Helen, Sue, Carol and I abstained,) licked their chops, proclaimed it the “greatest brisket we’ve ever eaten,” and each of the wives begged Evie for her recipe.*

                                             * * *  

*(To the best of my knowledge, no one ended up in Urgent Care.)

                                                                                                                                      Jan Chapman

                                                                                                                                       November, 2012